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The Software World
Please Give The Best Machine To Developers
The return is many folds when we provide developers with the best machine
If there’s one thing you can do for your developers, is to get the best machine possible ever for them. It may sound a no-brainer for some, for others, some convincing is needed.
Below are some of my thoughts. Hopes it’s convincing enough.
The cost of machine vs developer time
We all know machines with faster processors, more memory, and more storage are doing good for software development. But the question is how much faster or better?
The simple mathematic calculation
Using normal math, if using a $3000 machine needs 1 hour of compilation time, we would want to expect a $6000 machine should reduce the compilation time to 30 min, then it’s called break even.
Assuming a $6000 machine only reduces 15 minutes of time instead of 30 minutes, it may sound like this is not worth the cost, given a $3000 machine is 75% of a $6000 machine. Some think this is not cost optimum
However, the above is too simple a thinking.
A more realistic calculation model
In reality, if a single compilation saves 15 minutes out of 1 hour, when we perform 4 compilations a day, it will save 1 hour of time in total for the day.
One hour is 12.5% saving of a total working 8-hour working time! You are giving your developer a 12.5% productivity gain! If their salary is $50,000 a year, that’s like getting $6,250 productivity gain! Just a year, you get the net gain back!
Another view is, the extra one hour gained back can be used to run another compilation! Instead of compiling 4 times, now one can compile 5 times a day! That’s a 25% gain of extra compilation. The more compilation one can make, the more software development can be done.
Human capital is costly
While the above two views still do not completely represent the reality, anything that saves the time of developers is really worth serious…
